1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electrophotographic photoreceptor that is used to form an electrophotographic image, a method of manufacturing the electrophotographic photoreceptor, an image-forming apparatus, and a process cartridge.
2. Related Art
In a xerographic image-forming apparatus, images are formed by an electrophotographic process using an electrophotographic photoreceptor (hereinafter this may be simply referred to as “photoreceptor”), a charging device, an exposing device, a developing device, and a transfer device.
With the recent technical development of the constitutive members and systems thereof, significant improvements in the speed and operable life span of a xerographic image-forming apparatus have been sought. With this, the requirements for high-speed operability and high reliability of the respective sub-systems of the apparatus have been increasing. In particular, improvements in the speed and reliability of the photoreceptor used for image writing thereon and the cleaning member for cleaning the photoreceptor are desired. Furthermore, the photoreceptor and the cleaning member receive more stress than any other members owing to their mutual sliding against each other. Therefore, the photoreceptor is often scratched or abraded, causing image defects.
In order to prevent problems such as this scratching or abrasion, a resin having a crosslinked structure may be provided on a surface of a photoreceptor to form a layer having high mechanical strength, thereby ensuring a long life span. As to the resin layer having the crosslinked structure, since molecules in a coating liquid each have a crosslinking reaction group before coating is performed, activation energy such as heat or light can be applied if necessary, after the coating liquid is coated on the photoreceptor, to perform a crosslinking reaction, thus forming a crosslinking structure.
However, the crosslinking reaction frequently occurs gradually in the coating liquid before the coating liquid that is used to perform the crosslinking reaction can be coated on an object to be coated. Thus, there is a problem in that physical properties of the coating liquid or the layer after the crosslinking reaction are changed. In particular, since this significantly affects the mechanical strength, the mechanical strength is reduced together with the change in the coating liquid over time.
Therefore, there have been many studies on ensuring the stability of the reactive coating liquid.
The invention has been made in view of the above circumstances.